


The Bomb (Voltz)

by Entomancy



Series: Divergence [1]
Category: Yogscast
Genre: Gen, Voltz, Zephos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entomancy/pseuds/Entomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was bad. This would eat the world.</p><p>(Relates to Episode 12 of Voltz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ohslGivm8), with a little artistic license on exactly what happened. Now edited slightly to fit in with the Divergence (Voltz/Yoglabs) series.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bomb (Voltz)

_What the holy shit?_

The expletive wasn't enough – but bloody hell, what _was?_  Zephos clung to the suddenly-impermanent stone wall of the narrow tunnel, trying to cram his fingertips into any vague hint of a crack, as he made his way precariously along the lurching surface. Wind howled in his ears, a screaming typhoon of clawing, grasping air that tangled itself around him, tearing at his clothes, his skin, as he _insanely_ followed the flow of it further into the crumbling earth.

 _There's no crazy wormhole thing under our house_.

The sound of ricochets prickled at his panic-sharpened attention, and he flattened himself against the wall, head turned aside, and tried not to breathe as a small avalanche of dislodged stone rattled past him, striking small blasts of pain from his already-battered limbs, and he lurched back again, squinting in the half-gloom, to where the strange dull light was the only thing coming _back_ up the tunnel.

 _This is bad_.

Those words echoed again, momentarily louder than the roaring winds and increasingly-close crunching howl of dying stone – heard without sound, the shape of them appearing in his mind so suddenly it had shocked him, but not so much as their meaning. He'd seen it in Lalna's eyes too, as the scientist had dropped his tools, eyes widening as the panic-laden tones had broken into their thoughts, followed by a flood of incepted-instructions.

When something was enough to scare _Ridge_...

The ground shuddered under him and Zephos bit down on a yelp, leaping forward as he felt the stone shift beneath his feet, and a ragged hole ratcheted down where his boots had been a moment before. He was freezing, the cold sweat of terror instantly torn from his skin, as if the winds were trying to draw out all heat from his flesh before the devouring attention could reach him in its entirety, and he shivered violently, not daring to let go of the wall long enough to even rub his own fingers.

The tunnel ended, more suddenly that it had any right to do, and what breath he had left froze in his chest. He had expected – what? A hole? An explosion? A _big_ explosion? But this was... this was... this...

 _This will eat the world_.

The cavern was beyond immense – a massive, raw-torn breach in the earth, the crumbling walls a geological textbook of severed strata and collapsing cave mouths. The space was partly lit by filtered sunlight from falling sinkholes above, partly by the bloody lavalight that rose from below – where great torn veins in the bedrock bled out molten stone, trailing upwards like fading, inverted firey rain – and partly by the strange, hollow light that poured erratically from the twisting mass of rending firmament at the centre of it all.

“Um -”

_Holy shit._

Reeling, he barely had presence of mind to yell out as the rock crumbled underneath him, but before the insane gravity of the place could snatch him up, a solid grip closed around his wrist. The support manage to distribute across his body from just that contact, and he looked up into a face made unfamiliar by the impossible worry twisting the features. Ridge's hair swayed strangely in the roaring winds – indeed, everything about the man was flickering slightly, the faint snap of his long coat in the dragging air seemed mistimed, somehow, as if it was being added on as an afterthought – but his own ongoing curiosity about what the dapper enigma actually _was_ would have to wait.

Standing on air, Ridge swung him round for a few heart-stopping seconds, until Zephos found relatively solid ground under his boots again, and flattened himself back against the wall of the dreadfully-narrow ledge as Ridge let go again. The floating man glanced back over his shoulder, and his lips thinned as he looked at the seething mass of dissolving world.

“I can't stay... connected, long enough to fix this,” he muttered, a strange combination of disbelief and horror curled across a face unused to either. He reached into his coat, and there was an eyeball-aching moment of displacement as his hand drew back, and he pushed a chest-sized metal shape into Zephos' arms, all grey-black plating and ominous warning labels. He jerked a thumb behind him, and when he spoke, Zephos again got the strange impression the words were coming in from somewhere else, only tangentially using his ears to get in.

“Try and have it drop into the anomaly,” he said grimly, and nodded along the ledge. Zephos followed his gaze and nearly swallowed his own tongue as he saw the ragged outcrop of darker stone still jutting from the scraped-clean wall.

“What the shit do I _do?_ ” he half-wailed, but Ridge was already gone, rising up into the buffeting storm and skimming across the surface of the cave, moving like a bad stop-motion animation as random bits of him seemed to shiver in and out of view. Zephos tightened his grip on the bomb – realised what he was doing, and had to fight the urge to throw the thing as far away as possible – and tried to persuade his locked knees to move.

The ledge was very narrow, getting narrower by the moment, and he adjusted his grip until he had one free hand, digging around in his jacket pocket until his questing fingers closed on a narrow shape. He pulled out the torch, lit it against the wall, and tried to find some solace in the warm little glow, even as dislodged embers streamed past his face and the light flickered wildly.

_This is really bad. This is so bad._

But at least he could move now. Awkwardly, trying to keep his back pressed against the crumbling rockface, with an antimatter bomb clutched ludicrously close to his chest, he edged along the stony lip of the vast cavern. Footing was barely extant, and he was fairly sure he was only keeping his balance as a sort of side-effect of the internal battle between vertigo and the overwhelming desire to be _anywhere else at all_.

Lalna would be in here somewhere. The scientist had gone the other way, following his own internally-heard instructions, and Zephos tried not to think about falling, white-clad shapes in the darkness. As for the others, he could only hope that Honeydew had quashed his innate fascination with explosions enough to stay back, and the last he had seen of Sips, the pale man had been dragging Sjin away from the collapsing remnants of their base, wracked with a near-hysterical kind of laughter and babbling about copper.

He had almost reached the outcrop when the ledge failed, and a wind-assisted, desperate leap carried him out onto the dark stone. He landed badly, and hard, as he curled around the bomb, the torch skittering away from his shaking fingers until it was caught up by the surging air and dragged out into the maelstrom. The outcrop was shaking under him, little bits of stone tearing away and peppering against him, stinging , and he dragged himself as close to the edge as he dared. It was impossible to breathe out here, the air sucked from his lungs before he could even close his lips, his eyes streaming in the dust and wind, and he wedged the ominously-small bomb against the ground, trying to force his frozen fingers to work.

He tried not to think what would happen if this didn't work.

He tried even harder not to think about what would happen if it _did_.

The detonator cover finally flipped open under his hand – and tore off, instantly – and he braced himself against the floor in a futile attempt to stop his own inexorable slide towards swirling, crushing oblivion. There was a timer, but his eyes were streaming too much for him to read it, and he frantically punched at the keys as he felt the heel of one boot edge over into empty, grasping air, as the twisted gravity of the place began to tighten its grip around him, and he felt himself start to lose contact with the ground.

The panel flashed – armed, and suddenly gleaming with technological malevolence – and with a wordless yell Zephos hurled it forward. There was a horrible moment of hesitation as the angular shape seemed to just hang in the air – as the _sound_ began, an unstable rising pitch that drained any remaining heat from his skin in the chill of face-to-face finality – and then the wind and traction caught it, dragging the flashing shape down into that unmaking maw. Zephos skidded backwards, grabbing at the failing rock, as a chunk the size of a door cracked off just in front of him and plunged away into nothing.

“Um, guys? I – I think I might have - ”

That was his last clear thought, as the whining reached a peak and Zephos' world vanished first in a swirl of fabric – Ridge suddenly crouching down in front of him like a shield of frock – and then a soundless, sightless wall of aftershock-light.

It seemed an eternity before anything other than a faintly-buzzing numbness managed to penetrate his thoughts. There was movement, somewhere around him, and he felt the ground come back underneath him; softer this time, but blessedly solid. After a moment there was another thump, a familiar groan, and Zephos finally managed to draw together enough of his fragmented attention to ease one eyelid open.

He was slumped out on a small hillock, the grass cool against his face, and Lalna was lying next to him, grumbling as he tried unsuccessfully to lever himself onto his elbows. The scientist looked like he had been through a rock tumbler – his goggles were cracked and loose around his neck, and there was a gash along his cheek, but Zephos felt little better. He tried to remember how words worked.

“...welp...” he stopped, frowned, and Lalna snorted. Together, they managed to lever each other back up into a sitting position, succeeding as there was the faint thud of footfall, and Ridge dropped down beside them. He looked entirely unscathed and, Zephos couldn't help but note, entirely solid again. He swept a curl of dark hair out of his face, and nodded.

“We're safe for now.”

Zephos met Lalna's gaze, then flopped back as the laughter burst free – relief tangling around the sound, as the horrible tension finally broke and seemed to take all of his composure with it.

“Oh _god_ ,” he managed, past the spluttering, as Lalna patted him on the head, his own shoulders shaking with silent laughter. “I can't – um – I - ” he gave up and just lay back until he could breathe again. Lalna glanced over at Ridge.

“Mine went off... under their base. I think.”

Ridge turned, peering back over the hill behind them. His hand went back into his coat as he grinned, a vindictive gleam in his eyes, and he began to draw something else from the impossible folds.

“That – I _can_ handle.”


End file.
